Discovery Channel Canada visits NTNU and Trondheim Fjord

The science program Daily Planet has 8 million viewers. During the last week of June, a production crew from the program filmed an expedition to look for a plane wreck from the Second World War that is located on the bottom of Trondheim Fjord.

“Our program consists of short documentaries from around the world. Each documentary is six minutes. We cover all fields of science and technology, and have 8 million viewers,” says producer Lara Landa at Discovery Channel.

Landa spent time during the last week of June with researchers from NTNU’s Department of Marine Technology aboard the research vessel Gunnerus as it cruised the Trondheim Fjord.

Discovery Channel is making several documentaries from Scandinavia this summer and contacted NTNU about possible topics. Producers chose to film a research cruise with Professor Martin Ludvigsen and his team aboard the Gunnerus as they tested miniature submarines and other ROVs, or remotely operated vehicles.

The cruise took researchers to the location of a plane wreck from World War II that was discovered at the bottom of the Trondheim Fjord last year.

The plane is an RAF Handley Page Halifax bomber, one of just three such bomber wrecks.

“We conducted three tests with Discovery Channel. One involved the use of underwater hyperspectral imagery (UHI), which we conducted with Ecotoner AS, while the other two involved stereo photography and the use of Oculus Rift as an imaging tool,” Ludvigsen said..

The date for the Discovery Channel documentary on the Trondheim Fjord cruise has not yet been set.